I WOKE BURNING WITH sweat. The dream was still fresh in my mind, so fresh I touched my lips with shaking fingertips. I told myself I’d had the dream because of the almost kiss with Montgomery. It had nothing to do with Edward. And now it was daylight, at least midmorning. Mottled sunlight and the distant sound of waves filtered between the bars on my window.
I’d slept through dinner and all night. I might have slept for days, for all I knew. I wiped my damp palms on the bedcovers. When had I crawled under the sheets? I was wearing a nightdress I didn’t recognize, something expensive with lace at the collar. But when I’d fallen asleep, I’d still been wearing my dressing gown.
Someone had undressed me.
I pushed back the sheets as if they were on fire. The memory of the dream flooded back, making me dizzy. Edward’s hands on my naked body. The crisscross of cuts on his hands from peeling back the metal dress. Had Edward undressed me? Was that why I’d dreamed of him?
No, surely not. He was a gentleman and so shy he’d barely look at me. But then who? Had one of Father’s beastly servants removed my clothes? The thought made the fibers of my stomach shrink.
I threw open Mother’s trunk, looking for something plain, and found a simple blue dress. I unlaced the unfamiliar nightdress hurriedly, but a breeze from the window made me pause.
Whispering. The rising and falling cadence of words, carried on the wind, spoken in a language other than human.
I drifted to the window, watching the trees. Beyond the jungle the sea stretched forever. There were no curtains, making me feel suddenly exposed in only the half-unlaced nightdress.
I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. My arms and face were tan. The meager food and harsh weather on the Curitiba had stolen the softness from my face. I slipped the nightdress off my shoulder, turning to see my back in the mirror.
The puckered flesh of a scar I’d carried since I was an infant ran the full length of my spine. When I was a child, Mother dressed me only in high-collared shirts to keep it hidden. She said it reminded her of my difficult birth and deformed back. My father’s gifted hands had put it right, but not even he could operate without leaving scars.
Mother was long gone, but not her spirit. Keep it covered, she seemed to whisper. I hurried out of the nightdress and into a chemise, then pulled the blue dress over my head and pulled the collar high around my neck. I’d have to skip a corset. Mine was filthy, and Mother’s were so old-fashioned that I couldn’t lace any of them without assistance. Without it I felt strangely light, and I touched my ribs, thinking of the metal dress in my dream.
Someone knocked at the door. I squeezed the strange latch, expecting Father or Montgomery or one of the natives.
But it was Edward.
“Oh.” The one word was all I could manage. Seeing him brought back the dream with a powerful rush. I bunched my hands in the soft fabric of my skirt to remind myself I was dressed. This wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t some shifting specter. I closed my eyes and leaned in the doorway, dizzy.
“Juliet? Are you well?” Concern crinkled the skin around his eyes. He took my arm and led me to the desk. He poured water from a pitcher into a glass. “Sit down. Have some water.”
I took the glass with shaking fingers.
“I came to see if you were awake. You’ve been asleep nearly eighteen hours.”
“My carpetbag. In the corner. Bring it here, please.”
He picked up the ragged thing and set it on the desk without question. I dug through it for the embossed wooden box that held my medication. I opened it and removed one of the glass vials and the syringe. He raised his eyebrows, curious.
“It’s a chronic illness,” I said. “A glycogen deficiency. I have to take a daily injection or … I get dizzy.” I left out the part about the coma. Edward had his secrets. I could keep a few of my own.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
I set the tip of the needle against the vial’s opening. “It’s rare.”
He watched, fascinated, as I punctured the vial lid and drew in twenty-five milligrams of the treatment. My hands knew the movement by habit, but I’d never injected myself with someone watching.
I concentrated on the syringe. When it was full, I set it aside and unbuttoned my shirt cuff, rolling it slightly past my inner elbow. Edward shifted closer. I cleared my throat, the dream still too fresh.
I pressed the tip of the needle to my elbow, above the ghostly blue vein just below the skin. I slid it past the surface, barely flinching, and pierced the vein. My thumb depressed the plunger, and the treatment melted into my blood. I let out a sigh.
Edward watched from the corner of his eye. I withdrew the needle, wiped it carefully, and put it back in the box.
The sunlight flickered over the walls. Clouds were forming.
“You spoke with Father yesterday,” I said. “What did he say?”
The flecks in Edward’s eyes glowed. He didn’t answer.
“Did he apologize for nearly drowning you, at least?”
His gaze drifted, cataloging every item in my room. “He strikes me as the sort who’s never apologized for anything.”
“We worked out a bit of an … arrangement. I don’t think he has any intention of murdering me in my sleep, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I rolled down my sleeve and fastened the button. The treatment was already making me clearheaded. I peered at Edward, the flesh-and-blood young man in my room, not the dream specter. Whatever he and Father had spoken of, he wasn’t going to tell me.
“Well, I’m sorry. If I’d known that’s how he would react—”
“Don’t. It’s hardly your fault.”
I ran my fingers around the worn box edge. “I suppose you’re going to tell me your suspicions were right. That only a madman would live out here.”
He leaned closer. “It’s not just him, Juliet. They carry an arsenal just to step outside. What are they so afraid of?”
I drummed my fingers on the box nervously. Remembering how in my dream the light from the swinging kerosene lamp lit his face as his hands traced over my naked skin.
“Did you undress me last night?” I asked bluntly.
He couldn’t hide his surprise. He ran his hand over the tangled hair on the back of his neck. “Undress you?”
I squeezed the box, feeling foolish, like I had tested a theory too early. “Never mind,” I said quickly.
“Why would you think …?”
“I woke up in a nightdress I didn’t put on.”
For a moment his eyes searched mine, trying to peer into my head. Studying the sound of our silence. His lips parted, asking a question without ever saying a word.
Would you want me to undress you?
He’d hinted at his interest, but how could he expect me to think about such things at a time like this, when I’d just met my father after years apart? And there was Montgomery to consider, and that near kiss, and Edward didn’t even begin to know me. If he knew some of the things I had done, the dark things I sometimes thought, he’d change his mind.
“I didn’t undress you,” he said, and the silence that came next was heavy between us.
Breath slipped from my lips, pressed by some invisible force. A connection was growing between us, pulsating between us, in time with the beating of my heart. That might not be my last dream about Edward Prince, I realized. And the next one might not be unwelcome.